More than a century ago, submarines and torpedoes were designed with fins or wings for stability and/or for controlling the ascent and descent of hulls. More recently, "flying boats" have been designed with hydrofoils which support the entire weight of the vessel when it reaches operating speeds; and, in this regard, hydrofoil wings or fins have been adjustably positioned below the keels, or in the keels, of the standard hulls of water craft of all sizes, from one-person sport "scooters" (see U.S. Pat. No. 2,929,346 issued to G. E. Perce) all the way up to ocean freighters (see U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,881,438 and 4,040,373 issued to Allen Jones, Jr.) for the purpose of lifting such vessels up onto a plane. Further, such flying boats have also included fore and aft sets of fins for use as ailerons to control hull movement (see Perce, supra) and fixed, retractable swing wings (see U.S. Pat. No. 3,545,399 issued to Herbert A. Adam) positioned along the hull near the bow "for use in smooth inland waterways . . . to control pitch at high speed."
In addition to such flying boat designs in which hydrofoils are positioned below standard hulls, the prior art also includes "HYSUHULLS" in which hydrofoils are positioned along the underwater ("wetted") portion of a vessel's hull to develop lift forces for supporting only a portion of thee vessel's weight when higher speeds are attained. Such HYSUHULLS position at least one hydrofoil, or set of hydrofoil fins, as close as possible to the bottom of the hull. This design has apparently been most effective in catamaran-hulled small craft, the foils and fins being positioned in the tunnel between the hulls (see U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,606,291 and 4,665,853 issued, respectively, to Karl-Gunther W. Hoppe and Hans G. Gerdsen et al.).
With the exception of a few flying boat designs, the various prior art hull designs identified above have not proven technically feasible and/or commercially practicable and have not received wide acceptance by the boating community. Apparently, their planing designs, while quite fast, create safety problems related to (a) a dangerous loss of stability should their foils/fins strike floating objects, and (b) difficulty of operation requiring relatively complex controls and sophisticated operators. These problems are addressed by my invention.